The Problem With Feeling Safe

Photo Credit: Rune T via Compfight cc

Scrivener promises that nothing you write down in it will ever be lost. I was guaranteed that there is no possible way that anything written in Scrivener could ever possibly be deleted, trashed, or gone forever. It's like the internet. Only Scrivener takes downloads directly from your head and into Scrivener. (Yes, dramatization, but don't laugh--I think he's working on it.) 

So, I felt safe in knowing that my stories could ever be lost in any capacity.

That only works if you don't purposely delete the story.

You see, I thought that my recent shorts-off story was safe from ever being erased when I saw a "copy" of it in scrivener. To make long story short, if scrivener couldn't ever possibly let you lose anything, I found a way.

I looked in the backup.

I looked in scriveners back-up to the back-up.

And that back-ups back-up.

I looked in my dropbox.

I searched my whole computer.

Please make note: This was not a failing of scrivener. It was my author fail for not being paranoid.

In essence, I felt safe in knowing that scrivener had my back and it does--except against me. I have learned from an experience that could have been worse. Instead of 1/3 of a story lost it could have been all of it, or my whole database. It's not wrong to feel safe, it's not wrong to feel paranoid. I chalk this up to learning about the tools you use before losing something vital.

ACTION ITEM:

Get Dropbox or another backup system. If you already have one, make sure it saves everything.

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